Communication falling under NFC typically refers to short-range wireless, i.e. contactless, communication following the corresponding standard(s) aimed for simple and safe communication between electronic devices. NFC communication is enabled by bringing two NFC compatible devices within a short distance, e.g. few centimeters, of one another. Contemporary applications of NFC technology are associated with different financial transactions, such as various payment and ticketing services, and simple data access, e.g. data retrieval, solutions. NFC capability may be added to a mobile terminal, a PDA (personal digital assistant), or some other portable or even hand-held device, which can be, and often is, carried along anyway. Technology-wise NFC is typically based on inductive-coupling, which reminds of the technology behind RFID (RF identification) tags and transponders. NFC technology is specified in a plurality of standards relative to the applicable hardware components and used data transfer methods. Standards are created, maintained and/or adopted by entities including, but not limiting to, ISO/IEC (International Organization for Standardization/International
Electrotechnical Commission), ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute), ECMA (European association for standardizing information and communication systems), GSMA (GSM Association), The Wireless USB Promoter Group and Wi-Fi Alliance. Large conglomerates such as Philips and Sony (e.g. FeliCa) have been active in developing NFC compatible devices.
Social media applications such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn have gained tremendous popularity among the Internet users since the beginning of the 2000's. The concept of establishing various online communities through creation of an up-to-date on-line user profile by a desktop or portable computing device in a preferred social networking service and subsequently inviting a number of friends or business contacts to join the service for future information sharing seems to be the most typical implementation approach depending on the focus of the service (either business-oriented or a more like a buddy list). The users belonging to the same sub-community, i.e. ‘friends’ or ‘contacts’, may often contribute to others' profiles and share thoughts, files, links, and applications via the service whereas the remaining users being not members of the same sub-community may only access limited information related thereto. The social networking solutions thus try to combine features from more traditional paper-form or electronic personal address book, calendar, blogs, and web pages into an aggregate (social) life portal for also others to use.
NFC-technique may be used to establish a friend connection by bringing two NFC compatible devices within a short distance of one other for information exchange. Then, the collected information may be utilized in social media applications, such as Facebook. However, creating a new friend connection may require an available network connection via which related information is transferred from an NFC compatible device to a remote server, for example. If the network connection is too slow, erroneous, or totally absent, establishing the friend connection remotely will fail. In the worst case, establishing a friend connection begins properly between the two NFC compatible devices, but while transferring the related information forward the network connection is lost and the whole procedure fails. Unfortunately, the user might not notice that and he/she may lose valuable contact information.